


Seven Thousand Seconds, Not That Anybody's Counting

by Daisiestdaisy (Doyle)



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Claustrophobia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 19:59:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3908692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Daisiestdaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gob's completely over that storage locker thing and never thinks about it when he gets unexpectedly confined in small spaces, obviously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Thousand Seconds, Not That Anybody's Counting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lydiduh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydiduh/gifts).



_"...made you look again!”_  
  
Showed what Tony’s voicemail message knew. Gob had barely turned around that second time.  
  
“Hey, Tony, it’s me. I just got your messages. Sorry I’m calling during the show. Or right before the show, I don’t really know what time it is. Sorry. I should’ve... gimme a second.”  
  
The parking lot was too dark to check his watch so he pulled the phone away from his ear long enough to look at the time. Ten fifteen, and still Friday. He wished he’d remembered earlier that his phone knew the date; it’d weirded out that security guard when he kept asking.  
  
“It’s after ten so I guess you’re already on stage. Or in the beanbag chair or an air vent or wherever, I don’t know what... how’s the theater set up? Did you tell me that? I don’t think you did. Hard to tell from your pictures. What with the angles, and because I was looking at you instead of thinking ‘oh, is that a dumbwaiter or a closet or’ – obviously it wouldn’t be the closet because that’s where the fake-mask-you disappears from. Stupid. Anyway. Doesn’t matter.  
  
“Listen, I was going to call you like always but I had to go into the office - Mom’s on my ass about that SEC thing and she wanted me to shred...” Dimly, from the maternal tirade he’d half-listened to earlier that day, he remembered something about phone tapping: “...wanted... me to... go check that all the files were all there ready to be handed to the appropriate authorities in the event of a subpoena. Only there was some problem with the elevator, power outage or something, I guess, and it got stuck between floors for a while. Uh, I was inside it, did I say that? Story doesn’t really make sense if you don’t know that part.”  
  
“It was kind of funny,” he said, because it _was_ , and Tony understood him better than anybody had in his life and would get that his voice only sounded weird and high because he was almost laughing about it. “Because the lights were out and I was all, hey, it’s Friday night and nobody’s going to be around to fix the elevator till, till, till people get into work on Monday, so I guess I’ll just settle in for the weekend, right? But I forgot there’re janitors and security people, and it actually turned out to be under two hours before some guard from downstairs found me and got the doors open so it wasn’t even a big deal at...”  
  
He hit the time limit on the voicemail before he could finish “at all”. It really wasn’t a big deal, was the thing. He knew that. He’d told himself the whole time that it wasn’t like the wedding trick. He would’ve been found. After the weekend, maybe, but a weekend was nothing. Monday morning, someone would have come along. A person could vanish and nobody notice for a month, but everybody needed elevators.  
  
He redialled, biting his lip as he waited for Tony’s message to finish. “Hey. Gob here, again. So, like I was saying, I’m fine, everything’s great, I’m heading home now.” He looked over at his car. It seemed smaller in the dark. Boxy. He missed his limo. “Heading home soon,” he amended. “Maybe I’ll hang out with that guard for a while. I should thank him, right? I mean, I already did. Probably did. I don’t remember exactly. Anyway, call me back when you finish the act. I...” He hesitated, weighing up the chances of the SEC, if they were listening in, telling his mother about him saying _I love you_ to a man. It didn’t seem like something they’d care about, but then he wasn’t clear on what they actually did. “Have a great show,” he said instead. “I wish I was there instead of here. Bye.”  
  
His new friend in security was peering out at him through the foyer windows. Gob lifted his hand, but the guy frowned and moved off without waving back.  
  
That was okay. He could hang out by himself. Before Tony he’d done that all the time.  
  
He leaned back against the side of the car and flipped through his phone to his contacts. Michael wouldn’t think it was weird if he called. He might think it was too late or annoying or whatever, but he knew Tony was out of town all week. It wasn’t weird to catch up with family while your boyfriend was out of town. Gob had shared a hard lemonade or seven with his brother a couple of nights ago, even, and that had been nice. They hadn’t fought at all. Michael had brought up Tony, politely, just as small talk, like anybody would ask about their sibling’s significant other. And when Gob, buzzed and enjoying himself, had taken that as an opening to talk way too much about Tony and how happy he’d been these past couple of months, Michael had cut him off in that quiet, careful way he did on the rare times when he was trying not to be mean, just honest: “Would you call it a relationship, though? Really? I get that you like him a lot and sneaking around’s pretty exciting, but you keep saying ‘relationship’ and I just, I think that means something a lot deeper than just some fun secret fling.”  
  
He hit the back button, hard, and Michael’s name and number vanished. The screen said it was ten twenty-two, Friday. Tony wouldn’t get off stage till eleven thirty, maybe later with encores, and even then he might not check his voicemail right away, or he might wait until morning to call back, or –  
  
_“Why don’t you go away, get away...”_  
  
He caught the phone before it hit the ground. The ringtone had startled him, Mark Cherry's voice too loud in the silent parking lot, but it was less surprising than Tony’s name and picture on the screen.

“Tony?”  
  
“Thank God you’re okay. Are you? I just got your message. I knew something was wrong when you didn’t call and you weren’t picking up. Are you with the security guy? If you need him to take you to the emergency room then screw patrolling the building or whatever the hell his job is, tell him he needs to drive you. Put him on the phone, I’ll talk to him.”  
  
“Come on, I’m fine. I’m not even hurt.” The jittery feeling under his skin hadn’t all the way disappeared, but it settled down. Tony working himself up over nothing was a problem he knew how to deal with. “You sound echo-y. Are you still waiting to go on? The audience is going to hear you.”  
  
“You’re on speakerphone. I’m in my car.” He was talking slower, at least. Gob heard him inhale and let it out. “I didn’t go on tonight, actually - the show got cancelled, there was this whole thing, I think the health inspector shut the place down? Something about a code violation in the kitchens? I don’t know, the manager was losing it so I didn’t stick around for details.”  
  
Gob squashed down the part of himself that was selfishly grateful. That part was why Michael thought he didn’t know what a relationship was. “Assholes. Can they do that? You have a contract.”  
  
“Yeah, well, that’s what agents are for. Carolyn can deal with that hot mess. I’m out. But I’m pissed at them, you know? Because I was ready to go on, and now I’m all full of this performance energy and nowhere to go with it.”  
  
“Okay. I get that.” Tony was leading up to something, and if it was 'so I’m going to hit up some LA club and pick up a girl, or a guy, or some combination of girls and guys' then he didn’t know what he was going to feel, although the hot, prickly sensation in his chest and behind his eyes suggested it wasn’t going to be good.  
  
“So I thought, I haven’t seen you in days, you’re only a couple of hours away, it’s a Friday night – can we do something? Dinner, club, go to your place? Whatever you want. I miss you.”  
  
Gob swallowed. “Same,” he said, more than he’d ever meant that before. And he wanted all of that, the back-to-your-place part especially, but it all involved leaving the office’s parking lot, and he could hardly explain to Tony that for inexplicable reasons unrelated to anything that had happened in the past three hours he was suddenly unable to get into a car by himself.  
  
“I’m just saying,” Michael had told him, when he’d tried to argue that ‘relationship’ was the right word, “I feel like if anything bad happened, if one of you had a real problem, then the other would bail.”  
  
He tried to keep any suggestion of real problems out of his voice. “So did you want me to meet you somewhere, or...”  
  
“Nah, stay there, I’ll come get you. I mean, we can meet somewhere if you want but with everything going wrong for us tonight I don’t trust Siri to get you anywhere. Is that okay? I’m probably just being dumb.”  
  
“It’s kind of dumb,” Gob agreed, so Tony wouldn’t guess he was relieved. “I don’t mind. I’ll wait.”  
  
“Thanks. I’ll be there as fast as I can. Stay on the phone with me while I drive?”  
  


  
  
  
Gob was, of course, grateful that the security guard from downstairs – his name had turned out to be Lou – took his job seriously. It had saved him from spending the weekend in an elevator. He was a company President, though, and this was America, and if he wanted to sit on the hood of his own car and tell his boyfriend a long story over the phone about how he’d ended up playing for Stan Sitwell’s softball team then that was what he was going to do. He only paraphrased this to Lou. He said “best friend” instead of “boyfriend”, which he felt kind of guilty about, but not really, since it wasn't even untrue.  
  
Lou might have worked the boyfriend part out for himself an hour later, when he happened to come out of the building a few minutes after Tony pulled up. He was nice enough to pointedly move his flashlight away from them, and give them a minute to look like they hadn’t just been making out against a car.  
  
“Shift change, Mr Bluth. Have a good night.” He looked Tony over. “You the one who called earlier? You didn’t need to yell.”  
  
“Well, y’know, you didn’t need to ignore a dead security camera feed from one of the elevators, so maybe we both need to look at our choices, but whatever, guy.”  
  
Lou shrugged and ambled away to his own car. “Thanks, Lou!” Gob called after him. “What a nice guy,” he told Tony, once they were alone again. “What were you two talking about?”  
  
For a second Tony didn't say anything, just looked carefully up at him. Gob, who never minded being looked at, and especially not by Tony, was content to wait it out until he worked out whatever was bothering him. “To be honest,” Tony said, but then his phone was ringing, that one song from _Cats_ , and he was frowning down at it. “It’s my agent,” he said, needlessly, since Gob knew all of his dumb personal ringtones. “I have to take this for a second, then we can go, okay?”  
  
She was calling late, but it made sense she’d be pissed about the cancelled show. Gob had never met Carolyn in person, but he’d overheard enough of Tony’s phone calls to know he wouldn’t want to be that club owner right now.  
  
Tony walked away from the car to take the call and Gob checked his own phone. Twelve oh-six, Saturday. The battery was almost dead.  
  
“Gob, it’s midnight.” Michael, disappointingly, sounded too alert to have been asleep. “This better be important.”  
  
“Not really,” he said. “I had enough battery left for one call.”  
  
“Well, I hope you called your secret boyfriend first. Next time you forget to charge your phone, remind him first that you have to wait twenty-four hours to report a missing person, okay? _Hours_. Not ‘Gob always calls me at eight and it’s eight forty-five’. I told him mom sent you into the office and he actually threatened to call every company in the building.”  
  
In the silence that suddenly stretched out across the lot, Gob could hear his own heartbeat; Michael’s breathing; and Tony, talking quietly to Carolyn. He caught “...already apologized, God. What part of ‘family emergency’ didn’t they get?” – which didn’t even make sense, because Tony’s family was in New York.  
  
“It’s just how our relationship is, Michael,” Gob said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't recall who on tumblr came up with a Bojack Horseman human AU where Princess Carolyn is a showbiz agent called Carolyn Prince (and still played by Amy Sedaris) but she's been my headcanon agent for Tony ever since.


End file.
